Adam Doree

Posts by Adam:

Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

LucasArts Producer Jake Neri talks to us about technical hurdles, language barriers and introducing Star Wars fans to the MMO.

A not very long time ago in a conference chamber not very far away we had the opportunity to chat with Jake Neri, Producer with LucasArts on Star Wars: The Old Republic, the hotly anticipated BioWare-developed PC MMO. Here are the results. For maximum impact, print the article onto cellophane and move it slowly past eye-level whilst staring at a map of the constellations.

VGD: You have an incredible amount of spoken dialogue in this game, and in three languages to boot! Can you talk me through how you’ve pulled that off?

Jake Neri: Well we’re still in the middle of developing that. It’s a tremendous effort, we have a huge team collaborating on that both at LucasArts and at BioWare studios in Austin and Edmonton are working on that project. It is a massive undertaking, but the pay-off for the player is really huge, and I think that was something that we decided early on – when we wanted to go to full-voice, we wanted to make sure we could do that in all the key languages, to reach as many as people as possible. We’re trying to create a world phenomenon with the game, we don’t think we can do that unless you can hear it in the language which you speak.
Read full»

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Interview

Epic, five page marathon chat with EA producer on appeasing the hardcore, obligatory logins, dumping Gamespy, the joy of Halo Wars and where the RTS will go next.

Depending on who you read, real-time strategy is dead, dying or cuddled up in a leather armchair somewhere polishing its war medals and writing angry letters to the local gazette. The genre needs a shot in the arm, and what better franchise to wield the syringe than Command & Conquer, one of the oldest and most successful of top-down tank molesters. At a recent EA showcase, we caught up with Raj Joshi, producer on Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, for his thoughts on base-building, the competition and whether you really can squeeze the full range of options into an Xbox 360 controller.

VideoGamesDaily: Hello Raj, thanks for chatting with us. Do you think this kind of preview event does justice to a game, particularly an RTS title like this one? You don’t really get to experience the feature set in full…

Raj Joshi: I think it works pretty good, getting everybody together for the first time for a hands on on multiplayer, getting into a match and seeing how it comes alive dynamically with many people. We’ve been doing hands-on one-on-one through the single player campaign, and I think that although single player’s very important for Command and Conquer because a lot of people try to do that, I think our game really shines when you have five team-mates, you get to see the three different classes in action and work together with people.
Read full»

Mass Effect 2 Interview

Game producer Adrien Cho on BioWare boozing, pushing Unreal Engine 3 to its limits, comparisons with Star Wars: The Old Republic and a “holistic” approach to development.

Will it be on the PS3 or won’t it? Will Shepherd be in one piece by the finale or won’t he? Will you be able to jump twixt the sheets with the entire cast, or just its female members? Questions hang round Mass Effect 2 like bits of shrapnel in zero-G. Here are answers to a few of them, care of game producer Adrien Cho.

VideoGamesDaily: So, Mass Effect 2. The first one was obviously a highly acclaimed game, but it came out in the midst of a lot of exclusive content on Xbox 360. Do you think it got a fair share of the attention?

Adrien Cho: I thought actually Microsoft was a really good publishing partner, they really supported us, and they recognised what a unique IP Mass Effect became. And they helped foster that, and allowed us to do a lot of different things. And with a sequel now I think we’re able to branch out more with EA to an all-new audience. So I felt that we’re only going to be able to reach out to more people with the new game, hopefully people who didn’t get a chance to play Mass 1. One of the goals was to say “hey, give it a try – we’ve made everything a little more accessible, combat, the shooter aspects of it.” We want people who’ve never even played an RPG, who don’t consider themselves RPG players, but are maybe drawn towards the sci-fi aspects of it, the shooting aspects of it… This game will hold up with the best shooters out there, and you get some real cool role-playing elements as well.
Read full»

Killer Instinct 3 fights for Natal outing

New chat with Rare chief suggests Killer Instinct could make a return – but not with a traditional controller.

One of the coolest fighting game franchises of the nineties was Killer Instinct. The original 2D brawler offered bold, sexy character design and production values light years ahead of other fighters, at a time when only the crude, untextured polygons of the original Virtua Fighter represented the emerging “proper 3D” beat-’em-up.
Read full»